What Am I Drinking: My March Teas

Hi everyone,

I"ve noticed that my teas change every month. Mostly the weather affects it, or perhaps the way that I"m feeling. As of late I"ve been affected by the change of things, and the way that my schedule is being turned around. I"ve started to gravitate towards greens and herbals that calm my nerves, but at the same time give me a steady long last amount of energy. I love how teas seem to help for just about any situation and mood that life throws at you. Which is why I wanted to share what I"ve been putting in my cup nowadays.

Matcha Maker  from Good Earth Teas: Eugene and I got this tea on a sale at Sprouts looking for a nice easy packaged Matcha on the go. Where as this tea doesn"t really live up to it"s Matcha name (flavor wise, it"s lacking Matcha"s umai taste), we were pleasantly surprised by the flavor of this tea. It brews to a flavor similar to an orange cream with light Sencha notes. This is my go to during the mid of the day when I"m looking to snack. Because it"s so sweet, you"ll can take this tea alone for mid day treat.

Lemon Balm Herbal: Clean and simple with soft notes of mint, grass, and citrus. This has become a staple in tea collection. Not only does it taste great, it has amazing health benefits. This tea almost always cures those pesky headaches when the weather changes. It also gets me to relax in the evening during a stressful day. Every now and then, I add a few rosebuds and lemongrass to this tea added even more notes to it. Another thing that I love about this tea is that it works great iced or hot, so sometimes I brew a huge pot at the beginning of the day and save the cold leftovers to be iced through the afternoon and into the evening. Lately, I added my cold tea with some sliced cucumbers for a little bit of an herbal detox water.

Yuzu Berry Sencha from Chado Tea: Oh this blend, I had to throw in something that reminded me of my wedding (We got married on Ides of March since we"re both play and literary buffs). Our reception was at the Chado Tearoom in Little Tokyo, which we mainly chose because we wanted our wedding to be intimate and have the ability to share what we love. We had tea flights, introducing the notes on each. Yuzu Berry seemed to be one of the ones that I remember the most. It seemed to capture the simple beauty of the Japanese modern theme we had, mixed with the pop of citrus colors. When I go to Eugene"s adoptive in-laws for dinner, they bring this tea out and it just brings back so many good memories for me. This tea has the sharp umai taste of Sencha with mid notes of Yuzu and from what I can taste Strawberry and Raspberries. It comes off as beautifully aromatic when you brew it with a finishing sweet and tart note. This tea gives me so much slow building energy and doesn"t leave me wired. I love this tea with a salad! If you"re at Chado, try it with their berry salad. I prefer this tea hot, but it also taste good iced.

I hope that you enjoyed these selections. I look forward to sharing my selections with you monthly.
Cheers!

Tea in Kazakhstan

originally published on the TChing tea blog site:

http://www.tching.com/2016/02/tea-in-kazakhstan-part-one/
http://www.tching.com/2016/03/tea-in-kazakhstan-part-two/

An online contact mentioned plans to visit Kazakhstan--not about tea--and it sounded interesting to do research related to an unknown country, removed from even the vague hearsay one might catch about a country like Turkey.  Some hearsay about tea in Turkey:  they drink typical black tea there, not so different than Assam or Ceylon, brewed strong, taken with sugar but no milk.  But that"s only what I"ve been told by a couple of people there.

I"ve researched local tea culture in preparation for trips to Korea, Japan, and Indonesia in the last year--with mixed results--and the review process itself was interesting.  In addition to tea background I ran across some interesting tangents in those searches, like finding a traditional medicine / herb market in Seoul, where I did find green tea, just not the quality level I was hoping to find.

Central Asia Ethnic groups, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Central_Asia_Ethnic.jpg

Background / what to see in Kazakhstan:

Trip Advisor contributes a good initial summary:

The world’s ninth-biggest country is the most economically advanced of the ‘stans’, thanks to its abundant reserves of oil and most other valuable minerals. This means generally better standards of accommodation, restaurants and transport than elsewhere in Central Asia. The biggest city, Almaty, is almost reminiscent of Europe with its leafy avenues, chic cafes, glossy shopping centres and hedonistic nightlife. The capital Astana, on the windswept northern steppe, has been transformed into a 21st-century showpiece with a profusion of bold futuristic architecture.


Moving their capital city from Almaty to Astana essentially related to building a new city from the ground up.  This planned-city capital theme comes up in Australia and Malaysia, related to Canberra and Putrajaya, or for that matter also in Washington DC.  The same happened here in Thailand, just awhile back, with modern planning results thrown off by replacing a canal system with roads.


Wikipedia covers the general level of background detail well, explaining that 63% of the 17+ million people are ethnically Kazakh, 70 % are Muslim, and so on.  Due to Soviet influence--from being a part of USSR--use of their original language has been joined by Russian.  Of course not that many people are still living in yurts (nomadic culture tents), with current housing options separated by price and style, from Soviet era apartments on the low end to condos and houses beyond that.


No dedicated tea shops turn up as Trip Advisor reviews, so apparently the tea cafe scene isn"t much yet.

Astana, the planned city work-in-progress capital (attribution, Wikipedia)

Russian / Soviet tea history:

Prior to Soviet inclusion (as part of USSR) related to a nomadic culture, the tea history was probably not unlike Mongolia, especially since they were conquered by Mongolia at one point.  Russian tea history initially related to close ties with China, not just during that brief communist common-ground phase but well prior, but the Eastern-bloc fall-out Soviet countries and cultures switched completely over to black teas from other places, essentially where they stand today.  Here is more on Russian tea history cited from an interesting Tea Tips site related reference:


In 1567, Cossack atamans (chieftains), Petrov and Yalyshev, visited China, where they tried a local drink — tea. In 1638, an ambassador, Vasily Starkov, brought a present to the Russian Tsar from one of the Mongol khans — 64 kg of tea.


So far so good.  Those may be the same teas we order from China today, some maybe not, seems likely less black teas in that time period, but to jump ahead:


In 1970, for the first time in several centuries, the supplies of tea from China were cut off — due to political discrepancy between the two countries. Soviet tea industry could not meet the demand in full — the USSR began to import tea from India and Sri-Lanka. Our citizens appreciated Indian and Ceylon teas, and they forgot Chinese teas very quickly — nowadays, the share of Chinese teas in the Russian tea market is hardly higher than 5%.

a very nice yurt (attribution: tours42plus.com) 

Kazakhstan traditional  butter tea

Here is one rather vague reference to Kazakh specific tea history:


Regional drinks: Kazakh tea or chai is very popular and there are national cafes called Chai-Khana (tea-rooms) where visitors may sip this Kazakh speciality. It is drunk very strong with cream. 


Of course since chai just means tea in some languages--"cha" instead in Thai--this doesn"t clarify if anything was mixed with it, as with masala chai, the tea and ginger and various spices blend from India.


One site passes on a recipe for traditional Kazakh tea that includes black tea, salt, and butter, with optional inclusion of pepper or sour cream (!?).  A Wikipedia article for a related Mongolian tea describes that as made with either black or green tea, butter, and salt.  The tea type naming included "Suutei tsai (Mongolian: сүүтэй цай, Turkish: sütlü çay) (literally "tea with milk")," and the cross-referenced naming for Mongolian tea (tsai in Mongolian; shay in Kazakh).

So adding butter and salt to tea covers the general idea.  That also included an unusual reference to tea grade and storage:

The tea that the Mongolians use for suutei tsai commonly comes from a block. The block consists of a lower quality of tea that is made up of stems or inferior tea leaves and is compressed into a block that can be easily stored.

Tea production:

The standard Google-results take is that they don"t produce tea in Kazakhstan.  Someone on an expat-themed forum mentioned that her grandmother grew tea in the South of the country, so given that is correct it is possible.  It"s far too cold in most of the country for tea plants to thrive but of course tea production is tied to micro-climate conditions, not general averages, so South Korea can grow tea even though the national average winter temperatures would kill tea plants.

If online review doesn"t work how would we really know if they do produce tea there, or not, or in what very limited quantity?  Not easy to say.  One could take a look at annual tea industry production summary records (like this report) and the lack of any mention would confirm production is negligible at most, but that"s a bit unsatisfying.  The right person living there would know, just not so easy to reach them.

I"m reminded of an online tea-group discussion about Mexican tea production, related to a discussion comment that no tea is grown there.  I checked on that by asking a tea shop in Mexico City, listed in Facebook, and as far as they knew absolutely none is grown there.  One of my Facebook contacts grows a few tea plants in Mexico, so the total isn"t zero plants, but probably on the low side.

Modern tea consumption:

Too easy a question for Google, here is one good reference that"s close enough to complete and accurate for this review:


Kazakhstan is steadily increasing its import of tea, which reached 32,000 tons worth $147 million in 2013 alone...  On average, tea import is worth $100 million in Kazakhstan annually and it is growing...

Kazakhstan imports tea from more than 28 countries. India, Sri-Lanka, Russia, China, UAE and Keny are among the biggest suppliers. Other countries that supply the Kazakh market are the Netherlands, Czech Republic, France, Austria, Korea, Ukraine, Italy, Morocco, Armenia, Pakistan, Iran, Germany, Indonesia, Poland and Georgia. 

The Kazakhstanis prefer various kinds of black tea to green tea. Almost 90% of the tea imported to Kazakhstan is black tea packaged in tea bags and placed in boxes weighing up to 3 kilograms. 


Tea bags!  It all sounded so reasonable up until that last part.  It could be that they mean sold to end consumers as tea bags, since it seems odd that high a percentage could arrive in packaged form, but either way they really need to check out some loose leaf tea, and branch out related to types.

It"s hard to place how much tea they drink in relative terms from those totals, right?  Per one online reference their consumption is # 10 in the world, reported in 2014.  Per another online reference they"re not even included, again reported in early 2014.  Given that the rough numbers seem to say they drink about 3.5 pounds of tea per person annually, and Russia is on that second reference list for 3.05 pounds per person, so the results seem to have been combined.  The rest of those findings are interesting for being so inconsistent, but as a baseline England is somewhere in the top five consuming 4 to 6 pounds of tea per person annually (more research would pin down better numbers).

about the same size as Eastern Europe

What about local trends, the latest changes, for example did they ever take up matcha, or bubble tea?  It"s back to the idea of going past a Google search, actually asking people there.

Social networking research:

Tea groups on Facebook:  It really doesn"t help that English isn"t one of the primary languages, so there is a limit to how well it could possibly work out.  I found groups related to Kazakhstan, like this one, but nothing tea related, and discussion of tea didn"t get far (even worse than the Tea Chat forum).  There is a tea shop page on Facebook, Tea Masters of Kazakhstan, and a link to their website, but non-Russian-speakers would need a translate function to read it.  That vendor does sell Chinese teas, and teaware and tea-pets, etc., so some of that common take goes on there.


Expat groups / "Interpals" site:  since I"m an expat these types of channels are familiar, so I tried searching through a few such sites (Internations.org, Expat.com, and also Interpals.org).  The advantage to these is that English use is more likely; the disadvantage is that such sub-forums tend to be quiet places.

I talked to some very kind people that really didn"t have much to say about tea, except that they drank a good bit of it, generally not loose tea though.  One expat from Nepal mentioned that tea from that country is available there, although I"d expect one might need to mail-order to access better versions of it.  Another contact mentioned a native tradition of offering tea to all guests, with a convention that one keeps refilling cups to half full.  One person offered some interesting input that I"ll quote:


...some (not many though) drink black tea with milk and onion(!) . The black tea with milk and salt is called "atkanchai" which is in Uigur language. Never heard of a Kazakh term for the tea; I guess it originated with Uigurs (one of many nationalities living in KZ). 


My general impression was that the most traditional lifestyles and practices, the yurts and such, are consigned to a distant past, along with even basic awareness of butter teas.  Related to their history, it probably doesn"t help that I"m limited to talking with people that are using English and social media, the opposite of groups likely to be most in touch with that earlier culture.  It seems that better quality loose teas never did find an audience there, now or in the past, so that almost all tea consumed is ordinary mass produced black tea.

Revisiting making masala chai (Indian style spiced tea)

I had some unfinished business with masala chai due to buying spices to make it in Indonesia last December.   I since used those to make a tea that was really a variation of on as a Christmas blend, borrowing some aspects for that version, but still wanted to try a more traditional take.  We had a cold weather spell during which masala chai would have made more sense here a week ago--down to the teens Celsius, low 60s Farenheit, not all that cold--but I missed it, so I made masala chai when it wasn"t "cold" here anyway.

The plan was to make a relatively traditional version, with ginger, cinnamon, clove, cardamom,  and vanilla.   Only the clove wasn"t a relatively fresh version, since I only had ground clove to work with.  Ginger is sort of the central spice, as I see it, and I used ginger from a fresh root, grated just prior to making the tea.  I added salt, really an optional element, but in the right limited proportion it makes a big difference.

I did add one extra ingredient, one non-standard variation, based on experience from that Christmas blend,  adding a little orange zest (fresh grated orange peel).  Since I wanted to keep the original flavor profile I only added a little, relative to the other spices.  Based on that earlier Christmas blend experimentation, it would also work well to thinly peel the outer orange skin layer and dry it (on low heat in an oven for half an hour, maybe) and use the dried version later as an ingredient.  Steps like drying change flavor profiles a little, so that could work even better, or maybe not quite as well, or it might be equivalent but different.

Ingredients

The cardamom was from pods, the cinnamon ground from a stick on a grater immediately before, and vanilla from bean pods.  Ordinarily that would make for an expensive tea but those didn"t cost so much in a Bali grocery store, at least if you don"t factor in airfare to get there.  For tea I used a commercial grade black tea from Indonesia and a better black tea from Vietnam, tea a bit too good for blending, but it"s what I had.


I"m no cardamom or spice expert but this was the input Wikipedia offers about types, and it seems clear enough it was "black cardamom:"

There are two main types of cardamom:

True or green cardamom (or, when bleached, white cardamom[10]) comes from the species Elettaria cardamomum and is distributed from India to Malaysia.

Black cardamom, also known as brown, greater, longer, or Nepal cardamom, comes from two species, Amomum costatum and Amomum subulatum, which are distributed mainly in Asia and Australia.

Production and tasting

tea and spices, a bit scary looking

I boiled it all for about 10 minutes, then strained out that tea to drink and re-steeped using fresh water twice to see what would be left, and the next two steeps were still plenty strong.  For whatever reason it made sense to me to boil the tea and spices some first then add the milk to boil some with milk included, but I don"t think it made much difference to do it that way versus just mixing it all.


The tea was nice, a bit thick.  At first it seemed the salt level was too much but after adjusting milk and sugar level to offset the tea and spice strength it was fine, just better the second time when it had washed out, but still ok initially.


The clove picked up a little the second infusion, and the vanilla was strongest the third.  I think the exceptional thickness and creaminess was coming directly from the vanilla, but really that thick feel to the tea was hard to place.  A lot of times reviews will say an ordinary tea has a full body or feel to it but nothing like this; it was close to the effect of eating custard, nothing like using a good bit of milk would cause.

tea boiling with milk added

It made too much tea to drink in one sitting (although I did consume an outrageous amount of it, maybe four 10-12 ounce mugs of very strong tea) so I chilled the last bit to try later in a cold-tea version.  It was nice cold, just really, really, thick.

Lessons learned

In a sense the general approach was to try making this tea in a way that resembled cooking, to use trial and error, to mix the blend by feel.  I had made masala chai a few times before, when I first wrote a post about different recipe and process research and variations, and again when an intern from Nepal gave me a commercial pre-mixed version to work with, so this is the third time to experiment with it in a year.


The spice balance was ok in this version; it worked out.  I didn"t really add enough cardamom to let that show through well but somehow it was more evident in the chilled version the next day.  In general the tea was probably too strong initially, but the nice thing about the tea type is you can dilute it with milk and add a little more sugar to compensate, even if the normal process is to just cook it in the final form, based on a recipe.  The varying forms of the spices made them stand out more in different infusions, since I prepared it that way, with ginger washing out first, and then clove picking up, as I"d noted.  There"s something about how fresh vanilla shifts things that really made the overall effect work out, a depth it adds that pulled all the rest together well.


It"s best to carefully limit the salt, and I didn"t get that perfectly right, but it would"ve been possible to mix the first and second "infusion," but not necessary since it wasn"t really that far off.  It was hard to really taste what the orange zest added since I kept that input level low to retain the normal general profile, but I think I liked it.


Related to tea dosage, it"s best to make it for more than one person, but there just isn"t anyone else in my household that will drink masala chai.  I think re-heating the tea later would work but I didn"t try that.  The tea I drank when I first made it added up to a lot of caffeine to be taking in at one go but I think I felt the spice effects more.  I"m reminded of visiting Indian food lunch buffets as an intern a long time ago, how we would feel the effects of those spices in the afternoon, and imagined that we must have smelled like those spices (but we probably really didn"t).  Living in Thailand I"ve acquired a tolerance for curries but it"s a different mix of ingredients in those.


As for what to change, cooking time is always an issue, an obvious place for experimentation.  I only gave the initial version a 10 minute simmer, which was why the tea and spices could make two weaker batches / infusions after.  Some recipes (mentioned in that first post I cited a link for) called for two stages of short boiling mixed with long steeps, and other online anecdotal input claimed one could boil the tea and spice and milk blend for a very long time to get the most out of it.


The final "strength" or concentration level is also a good opportunity for adjustment; diluted to 1/4th the strength I drank the first batch at would probably make more sense.  But I liked it strong, and subjective preference carries the decision making.  As for spicing variation I"ve added nutmeg before, but there was already plenty going on for this version as it was.